I am disappointed that icannt.org is taken and is not an alternative root.
Edit: I've been rate limited because of this comment, apparently. Account burned - will make a new one. Dang says below it's because of flagged comments but I don't see many flagged comments in my history.
Of course we wouldn't rate limit you, or anyone else, for an innocuous comment.
We rate limited you because of flamewar comments you posted in another thread, like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48723651. You posted over 50 times in that thread, and many of your comments there broke the site guidelines. That's abusive. If we didn't rate limit accounts for doing that, we might as well have no guidelines or restrictions at all.
What do you mean by "US domains?" Domains registered by US citizens? Hosted in the US (in which case does that include territories)? Regardless of the definition, I don't see an easy way to do this, nor a reason to, since domains can change hands (and hosts) across countries.
Domains that fall under the jurisdiction of the US? The domains themselves not the websites they point to? Everything under .games is controlled by the US government, the German government gets .games.de instead. To be fair it should be .games.us and .games.de (or .spiele.de)
Even gTLDs using other languages, like .kaufen, are under US jurisdiction. A German website selling to German customers using a .kaufen domain is forced to abide by US law as well as German law or loses the domain. Using a .de domain they would only have to abide by German law. That's unfair that the US government gets to stick its grubby fingers into every TLD that isn't a country code.
For left wing VPNs there's riseup, but it's not the same category of product as Mullvad, it's a free giveaway that you have to request access to, and intended for your personal use only - no excessive bandwidth like torrenting.
I wonder how AirVPN doesn't run out of ports since you reserve a static port number across all nodes (which is also a fingerprint). They seem to be almost all allocated. Do they just plan to never have more than 64512 customers?
Radiolab (the podcast) did a good series on border policy that was pretty informative.
IIRC, the US-Mexico border was never open, but it was quite porous. People would come to the US, work for a season to make some money, then go home.
Then once border security started to be tightened, leaving was too risky so people would stay leading to a huge increase in the number of undocumented people living in the US.
To expand on this. California has the majority of illegal migrants. A significant portion of them are "seasonal" fruit pickers where there exist some migrant farmer visas for them, but not nearly enough. Now should we have American citizens/PR holders doing these jobs? Maybe, but it's pretty hard to get Americans to do this back breaking work in the hot sun for a few weeks, travelling from farm to farm until all the fruit is picked. American fruit is really only as affordable (and available) as it is thanks to all this migrant seasonal labour.
I think there's probably some leftist argument against this system on account of how we're taking advantage of poor countries and something something workers rights, but I think removing the ability to leave, to go home is the worst of both worlds.
Strict borders have only existed for ~100 years, and many were drawn without much regard for the people living there, often constructed with intention of religious segregation, and to maintain europe's global superiority
They run counter to the notion of sovereignty and local agency which we value greatly in the US
The irrationality of strict country borders and heavy migration controls will emerge as a heavy global challenge due to economic and climate migration and aging populations
I don't think we have a good answer for what replaces them, but I don't believe there's enough evidence to state that hasty decisions made after WWI and WWII should forever govern global human freedoms - and we need a better approach than war to renegotiate some of this
Part of the reason this thread and this topic is so fraught is there are many people, like you, who are willingly and confidently lying about history. Strict borders have existed since ancient times. There are physical markers of them all over Europe that are more than 1000 years old. You can see other borders from space. This idea that only in the 20th century did this idea emerge is so wrong that it’s got the history completely and totally inverted. Why make stuff up like this?
Specifically, assuming a succesfully policed border, how did one prove their nationality, if they had such a thing, or their legitimacy otherwise for crossing it?
I will take your word for it either way! Just genuinely curious. How was it all handled before passports and birth certificates and such?
For identity away from people that knew you or your relatives you had to rely on physical letters of introduction from trusted, well know people.
But usually you were proving that you were entering (or leaving) for a legitimate purpose rather than identity exactly. There is a long history of travel documents for this, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#Antecedents
Worth noting that once urban centers formed travel became the exception rather than the rule. There were traders who traveled trade routes and knew that requirements on those routes but for more exceptional travel you had to rely on these introductory letters in many areas of the world.
Mass migration events were different of course - and were always problematic.
The concept of a passport didn’t emerge out of the ether. If you were traveling on official business, for the state or the military or as a merchant, you’d be carrying papers that said as much. Much of it relied on trust and reputation, and assuming we’re talking about say medieval Europe possibly the signature or word of a Lord. As for enforcement, violence was common.
One of the biggest drivers of strict borders was tax collection: they defined who could collect tax from which subjects. This was a common source of conflict and so anywhere feudalism was practiced strong border definitions were strongly enforced.
It's possible the grandparent is talking more about the idea of limiting travel across those borders. That is a more defensible position but even then it was more about the the costs of enforcement.
Trade routes had very strong border enforcement because the borders were places taxes were collected for example, and there were limits on who could travel various routes.
For example Venice, Genoa and the Ottoman Empire jealously protected European end of trade routes linking to the spice road.
A lot of but certainly not all Dems (for example, Jayapal) support essentially unlimited asylum claims admitted to the US while claims are processed (i.e., not "Remain in Mexico"). This is a de facto open border policy; the vast majority of claims are bogus, but the claim gets you into the country and then most who are denied will overstay illegally as well.
The obvious solution to the problem of abuse of the asylum system (which is in fact a real problem) is to hire more immigration judges so that claims are processed in a timely manner. Apart from getting rid of the asylum process entirely, that's the only long term solution. It's something Joe Biden made progress on (though he did overstate his progress), and Donald Trump reversed.
It doesn't show up in the short term numbers because it is a long-term solution. But Americans aren't interested in long-term solutions.
Tell me, how do you, as an immigration judge, actually judge someone that says their life is at risk due to x,y, or z but you have no way of actually verifying that? Especially when they crossed quite a few countries to get here? I don't see how that's an actual solution to the problem.
One could easily argue that Trump made for more progress as far as the immigration courts being backed up by simply not having an almost completely open border like we did with Biden.
(Also, FWIW, those immigration surges were good things (for the US), and likely helped the US stick the "soft landing" instead of slipping into a post-covid recession)
Not better, just different? GP's chart includes two prior administrations for context; yours includes Trump 2, which also provides additional context (but excludes Bush and Obama).
Biden: "Here's an app where you can make an appointment to illegally cross the border. Our system will be so backed up that you won't need to go to actual immigration court for years, and even then if we tell you to leave and you don't we probably won't go after you. You'll have plenty of time to make an anchor baby. Oh, I can't close the border without a bipartisan bill that essentially enshrines a certain level of illegal immigration. Can't be done."
Trump: "Border is closed. We're deporting people, starting with mostly those that have committed serious crimes."
The mandatory trigger at 5,000 encounters/day (or 8,500 single-day) implied acceptance of very high volumes—potentially ~1.8+ million encounters/year—before full expulsion authority kicked in. That expulsion authority only lasted for 3 years. It also codified/expanded release authority for asylum seekers under certain "operational" conditions.
The main point is that Biden acted like his hands were tied and Trump showed that they clearly weren't, and that we already had the tools to effectively shut down illegal immigration (through the border, at least).
the graph actually makes it look like the jump was due to Trump's policies, since the spike started in his term. if anything the graph shows that Biden policies arrested it shortly after. I recall reading deportations were actually very high during Biden's term.
Biden, his party, and some Republicans worked for years on the toughest border legislation ever endorsed by a Democratic president. Trump demanded it be shot down so he'd still have an issue to campaign on.
Biden's executive actions resulted in the loosest de facto border in recent memory. That he later worked on some legislation that was ultimately ineffective isn't a great defense. He could have just directed the executive branch to be less lax the whole time!
> That he later worked on some legislation that was ultimately ineffective isn't a great defense.
The in-effectivity was due entirely and directly to Trump interfering in the matter. How can a president sign legislation that doesn't reach his desk because the party in control of the legislative body is in the pocket of a man who cares more about his career than the nation's well-being?
The current Mayor of New York City and three candidates that just won congressional primaries in the city belong to a political party called Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). They will be joining two more DSA members in congress. This is the DSA's platform on immigration:
> Allow workers to freely migrate between countries to seek employment without restrictive immigration controls. Demilitarize the border, end all immigrant detention and deportations, immediate amnesty for all immigrants regardless of current immigration status, and provide access to jobs, labor rights, and social services to all immigrants.
In other words, give labor the same mobility as capital. Nothing inherently unreasonable about that.
Note they say “to seek employment” and “without restrictive border controls”, not “for any purpose” and “without border controls”. This does not mean they’re advocating to let in convicted murderers or people who just want to migrate for welfare benefits. Calling it “open borders” is an exaggeration in absolute terms, though it is for sure accurate as a relative comparison to what we have now.
Also, their political party, as such, is the Democrats. DSA is not a political party. But yeah they are members of DSA as well as being Democrats.
I do not have a horse in this race. I am the exact opposite of what you have in mind. I simply suggest that instead of being hypocrites or cry babies, you guys maybe choose not sponsor a civil war that ends up displacing millions of people. If you take one step into it someone is going to pull the other leg which is what happened.
I do not think it's bad or evil that people want to protect what they have or protect even the idea of what they used to have. It's just that you need to have some level of intellectual honesty. That's hard, as you can see from your reaction.
Edit: I've been rate limited because of this comment, apparently. Account burned - will make a new one. Dang says below it's because of flagged comments but I don't see many flagged comments in my history.